Fiction With a Dark Side

Aries

***”I daresay, you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “Why, I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” -Lewis Carroll.

Element

Fire. As in, Have Gasoline? Will Explode.

Think of him like you would a grenade. When the pin is pulled, he is not your friend.

Polarity

Masculine. Aggressive. Think Alexander the Great. Or Attila the Hun. Or Yosemite Sam. *g* And for the sake of equality, Scarlett O’Hara.

Quality

Cardinal, which generally means that he/she is usually the initiator and likes to take the lead. Except I’ve only known one Aries in my life and the only thing he’s equipped to lead is a round of “99 bottles of beer on the wall.”

Symbol

The Ram. All horns ablaze and ready to charge. Except most don’t realize that no body wins with a head-butt.

Unbelievable. They hadn’t been summoned long ago and yet they had already begun to treat my bedroom like their own personal den. “May we please begin?” I begged for what had to have been the twentieth time.

Neither Volk spared me the slightest glance, the mongrels. This was going to go no-where fast if I couldn’t reign them in. Tamara browsed my humble book shelf with an intensity that unsettled me, while Titus made himself ever so comfortable on my bed…which looked more and more inviting with each passing hour. Or not. I’d probably pull a muscle trying to push the hulking mass of werewolf off.

“Couldn’t have picked someone else for this?” He managed to grumble through a yawn.

Why HADN’T I picked someone else for this? Someone more cooperative.

Yeah, right. Who the hell was I kidding? None of my characters were cooperative and who had ever heard of a cooperative Aries in the first place?

I didn’t like the way he was staring at my computer, Black-Hawk, as though it might very well bite him. Knowing Titus, he’d bite first and ask questions never. I sighed and swiveled my chair around, thumging the keyboard as I did. He caught my gaze and squared his shoulder at my challenge, but looked away. I smiled at the small victory and proceeded to think about his question. “I couldn’t think of any one more-” I paused, deciding to choose my next words carefully, “-Qualified.”

He took the bait, perking up like an eager puppy who’d been tossed a bone. A huge grin splitting his face nearly in two. Predictable.

Tamara, on the other hand, didn’t seem nearly as easy to win over. “I still don’t see why I am needed here,” she said and selected a book on world history-was that my twelfth grade text book?-off the shelf before shifting through it. Her refusal to acknowledge my presence had started to agitate me but I, too, knew how to play the game.

“Why, you’re an even more perfect example of the archetype than Titus-no offense, hun.”

He huffed like a snubbed child. Oi. Two raging rams in the same room, not the best idea I’d ever had. Titus could be worked though. It was Tamara that needed to be watched carefully and handled with the utmost caution.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. As if it were a nonchalant curiosity she was indulging for my sake alone. “How so?” she asked and there was something in her tone that made me think she expected me to feel pleased.

Too bad I only felt patronized. I help up my pinky finger to start the count. “Highly competitive.”

His smile thinned into a humorless line and the skin around his eyes bunched tighter. “You try being at the bottom of the food chain once in awhile.”

Tamara turned to stare at her subordinate. A flash of teeth gave him pause and I swear I might have seen him flinch. “I’ve had it up to here with your sniveling. You should be so lucky that Andrei hasn’t tired of it himself.” She said, then lowered her gaze back to her reading. “If you want your position back then take it, otherwise shut up.”

The Alpha Female didn’t skip a beat. “I prefer to think of it as influential. But I’m not entirely selfish. Most of what I do is for the betterment of the pack. No one else has the ‘nads to.”

I knew she deeply believed that to be true, though I think she would be less inclined to say so were her Alpha Male here. “Coupled with an insatiable need to succeed,” I turned to Titus, “In your case, to be accepted. You both knew where these roads lead.”

Tamara laughed and it was tart. Like a bark. “Two negative examples. Not very charitable of you.”

I shrug. “Haven’t had very good experiences with them. I do have a good example though…he’s just not fully fleshed out yet.”

Titus frowned. “That fib guy?”

“F-B-I, Titus, FBI. And yes, that would be him. But even his arrogance and need to achieve his objectives get him in trouble. That’s the point. But because of his ambition, he’s that much more likely to succeed.”

Tamara looks up from her book, her attention fully focused on me for the first time. “Does he?”

I smirk and shrug. “Maybe.”

“You have an exercise machine?” Titus called from the back room. “Sweet!”

I heard the thump as he maneuvered himself onto the Total Gym and the sense of dread clicked in a might belatedly as the clink, clink, clink sound of it caving in beneath his weight rang in my ear.

He groaned as he hit the floor with a thud.

Tamara smirked.

This was going to be a long night…

——————————————

In practice

It’s true that I can be a little unfair to my Aries characters. I think it has to do with the-ah-not so good relationship I have with my father and just how well he epitomizes the image of an Aries to me. It’s a habit I’ve been trying to break. Tamara and Titus are not villains but even in the beginning, Tamara is a huge threshold guardian for the protagonist of Dirge, Helena, and then makes a slow sliding decent down the slippery slope to becoming on of her greatest adversaries. Not really a spoiler since I foreshadowed as much in the very first scene that I have with them both.

Titus, well, that’s a whole other thing entirely. 😉 What i will say is he’s got the “friendly, energetic, impulsive thing down well.”

The FBI agent I alluded to was my attempt at breaking my “bad habit”. I rather like him, what little I’ve been able to sum up that is. More confident than arrogant but also a little wet behind the ears. I got to admit, a small vindictive part of me loves using my characters strengths against them but I also love watching as they overcome my attempts to thwart them. I’m still trying to figure out his name, but he’s got one hell of a journey ahead of him.

By the way, I like to think of myself as an equal-opportunity offender. I plan to get into the flaws of every sign, including my own. ESPECIALLY my own, cause they are a doozie. I think it’s important to address these more so than the positive aspects because it is the negative aspects that usually are cause for conflict.

Any Questions? Comments? Want to put me in my place? Notice any Arien traits in your own Characters? Have at people, floors all yours.

———————–

* Motto of the Aries

** Title of a Song, taken from Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper

** Wish I could take credit for this, but Linda Goodman’s excellent book on Sun Signs was the first to associated Alice in Wonderland quotes with the Zodiac. I picked the ones I liked the most of her selection.

My mother is an Aries, but she is the most unassuming, meek and gentle Aries you would ever meet. She must have something very amenable to compromise as a rising sign, I think. Although… she does become a more typical Aries in one particular situation: don’t mess with her kids. Ever. I remember getting into trouble in high school and they were going to kick me out of school for a week (for saying the f-word to a teacher, who I didn’t even know was a teacher and it a very odd situation) and she basically bullied the assistant principal into reducing my punishment to 2 days (one out of school, one in-school suspension). I was floored – I had never seen her be so aggressive with anyone. That man just sputtered and nodded and ‘yes-ma’am-ed’ — then did what she told him to!